Trying to make a bad image good

Sometimes its hard to convince architects on a tight budget and who are uninspired by the outcome of a project to spend the extra money and effort to get good pictures of the finished project. I make it a point these days to push hard for professional photography. As much as it “is” a benefit for my portfolio and pocket to be involved I have learned it also saves stress, time and effort later for all concerned. Its always easier to take the pictures yourself, not schedule time with a photographer, convince yourself that you own camera is good and you can take good pictures. Sometimes that works out, but sorry to say that the advocacy for this photo-shoot was not heeded. I even tried to educate to get them to take the best pictures possible, but it appears to have fallen on deaf ears. Now I find myself desperately trying to edit what was taken so a usable, half way decent result can be achieved for marketing.

From maybe 12 pictures of a single space, we boiled it down to 2 “workable” images. I then had to spend the time to fix the lighting, white balance etc, and add a piano where there was one already, but someone didn’t think to take the cover off….Sigh. Someday well progress as a species 😉

I will take the opportunity again to say, a professional photograph worth his salt can make even a sad space look good with a little time and effort. A little effort goes a long way and with a good camera at least there is a chance of a good image. The camera used here was described as a “decent camera”. It was at least a camera and not a phone but it turned out, unsurprisingly, it was 6 years old, the lens was filthy, there was no real control over the basics it only had “scene presets”, the CCD was small, had a very low dynamic range, only shot jpeg and was very bad in even slightly low light. We made a decent effort of the final image, but it could have been so much less work, stress, effort and outcome.

Hopefully I will soon get to go back and try again once the school has started back for the 2017 semester.